Above Their Heads, Great Ships Passed
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: Ten years is a long time to wait. But at least she isn't alone. A very different look at the time between the ending of At World's End and the post-credits scene. Elizabeth/Jack, Elizabeth/Will, some Elizabeth/Barbossa, all mostly hinted at.


**A/N: This was originally supposed to be a very short E/B piece, because I'm twisted like that. Then, halfway through writing it, I had this _incredibly_ bizarre "What if?" moment, and then _this_ happened. Title is taken from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's _Bring Me A Unicorn_.**

* * *

**Above Their Heads, Great Ships Passed**

Elizabeth wishes she hadn't the time to be lonely. There is a fine line between being alone, and being lonesome, and she feels she is crossing it. She cannot do handwork, she cannot forget the feel of a sword in her hands long enough to wield instead a needle. She feels ill at ease on land. She has to learn again to walk without compensating for the pitch and roll and swell of the ship, the sea.

This is too _nothing_, this is too _lesser_, this solid ground beneath her feet. This is too familiar.

There is no one to live for at home, save herself. And at night, when she sleeps and hears two heartbeats, she refuses to cry and it takes all her strength to follow through. She's the King of the Pirates. What, then, is she doing here?

She walks by the water, arms folded, looking steadily out, face set. When she stops to stand, she will hum but not sing. Songs can be dangerous things, the words used not wisely but too well, the wrong place or the wrong time or the wrong tune. But as she hums, though she can barely hear herself over the swell of the breakers on the beaches to her left and right, the lap of the water on the rocks at her feet, she fancies she can see the tide change. Bring in what it once too swiftly carried out.

At night she dreams of being young again. She's not old, not yet; but she's older, and seen too much in recent years to believe what the mirror tells her. From eighteen she has grown thinner, seeming taller, her eyes wary and searching and watching. Her dreams are all about the same thing: loss. And though she loses something different every night--- Will, Jack, a child, a ship, respect, her virginity, her father, her father, her father--- when she wakes up she is surprised to find that she is still as outwardly whole as she always was.

This is driving her mad. She stops humming, gives in, gives up, strengthens herself, starts singing. The danger means nothing. Her servants are silent, and the house all day resounds with the words. She's singing. She's wishing. She's a King: she's commanding.

And then there's black sails on the horizon.

* * *

Barbossa greets her himself as she comes aboard. He looks all the eviller for the time that's gone by--- not as long as it seems, surely?--- and for a moment, she's a child again, brought against her will, squeaking mouselike for a parley, not knowing what she was asking for. For a moment only. He doesn't smile--- she thinks he most likely doesn't know how, forgetting--- but his gaze is knowing and his grasp is warm.

She makes it a handshake, doesn't let him help her on board, in case that's what he's planning.

"Captain."

He bows, closing his eyes briefly, and his voice is filled with mockery. "Captain."

She takes three steps onto the ship, and stops to sway. Everything tilts. She can't believe the deck beneath her feet. The crew are giving her suspicious glances, most of them strange to her. She hasn't been explained. They haven't been readied for a woman to come aboard, to look at them with imperious eyes and to have the right of passage without molestation or interference in any way.

She turns back to Barbossa.

"Don't you ever swab these decks?"

He tilts his head, and the shadow of his hat falls over his face. His teeth are visible, but again, it's not a smile. "Ah, well. No doubt the Pearl could do with a woman's touch."

It's a jab, however slight. She'll need to remind him periodically that she is the Pirate King, so elected by the Brethren Court. Not, perhaps, a unanimous decision, but a decision nonetheless. He can't have forgotten.

"My thanks, Captain Barbossa."

"I heard the call, and answered. What more would you have me do?"

"Obedience is not usually listed among your virtues, Captain."

"And leniency is not listed among yours," he answers shrewdly, arms folded. No, he hasn't forgotten.

She's given a cabin. His cabin. This is as much respect as she can reasonably be shown. It's not a kindness, or an act of submission, but it is respect.

She resents it, all the same.

* * *

Long ago, Elizabeth Swann fought a battle.

She fought many such. She wielded sword, and dagger and dirk, she plunged deep and drew blood and bared teeth and fought with everything she had.

And when she won--- and when she _won_--- she had ceased to think of herself as Elizabeth Swann. As the Governor's daughter. As a woman.

She was doomed daughter, lost child, orphan, wife and widow, king and savior, a champion and a fighter and a pirate, a pirate, and when she was covered in dirt and stiff with salt and hadn't bathed in weeks, she could _cry_ over the loss of that girl, Elizabeth Swann. Could weep, could mourn.

But the battles, though won, were never truly over.

She fought. She fights still.

* * *

"How is Jack, anyway?"

Barbossa stops chewing for a moment, glaring yellow-eyed up at her. "Why don't ye wait and find out for yerself?"

"Forewarned is forearmed," she says. Trite, but true nonetheless. "Tell me what he's been up to these days. If you know, that is."

The inference, that he's uninformed about his rascally former captain, makes him bristle. "O'course I know. I put him in his present predicament meself."

"If he hasn't managed to escape by now," she points out.

Barbossa sneers at her. "There's no escaping this one. Not even for wily old Jack Sparrow."

"Old?" she says, raising her eyebrows. The look on Barbossa's face is something less than pleased.

"Ye've heard, then."

"Rumors only." She sips her wine, replaces goblet on table in perfect rhythm with the pitch of the ship, spilling none. "I like rumors. They're very entertaining. But the truth, in this case, would be welcome."

Barbossa, against all expectations, looks almost uncomfortable. "It's a slow process," he says, dismissively.

Elizabeth picks up knife and fork. "Is he going to die?"

"I haven't yet reached a decision about that," Barbossa says, drawing the words out, narrowing his eyes at her. He's absurdly shaken by the question. He takes a sip from his wine, and drops spill to rest in his beard momentarily, like blood rubies. He wipes them away with a dirty sleeve. "Or perhaps _you'd_ prefer to make the decision yerself. _Captain_."

Elizabeth saws through the meat till she reaches bone. The new cook really leaves much to be desired, and in that respect, he is not much different from the old cook. She chews for a moment, thinking it over.

"Well. He _did_ steal my ship. Commandeered it, I suppose he'll say. But I like to call a spade a spade. Jack Sparrow is a thief, and a liar, and a scallywag, but I'm not inclined to be lenient just because of his impressive reputation. If there is no honor among thieves, then what place has honor left? The _Compass_ was a good ship."

"Aye," Barbossa growls, "and the loss of a ship is a sore blow indeed. But what of my charts? He stole those too, be_fore_ he took your ship."

"But the charts did not belong to the King of the Brethren Court, and the ship did," she points out. "Besides which, by stealing the charts and going in search of the Fountain himself, he likely saved you yourself from the same fate as he is now undergoing. Perhaps a little gratitude is even in order to Jack, for testing the waters. So to speak." He gives no response to this, but she wasn't really expecting one. She leans forward, the silverware sparking light from the lantern to shine from her gaze, and eyes him. "Why did you have that chart, in the first place? Surely you've had enough of being immortal."

Again, no answer.

Elizabeth decides this is a victory.

* * *

The captain of the _Black_ _Pearl_ stands with his back to the deck, arms spread wide, hands gripping fast to the railing. The feather in his hat waves in the wind. The ship bucks, heaves, tosses, but he's still as a stone, as a statue, as a metal replica of what was once life. Barbossa has had an eventful past few years, to say the least, just as Elizabeth has. He fought, he lost, he won, he was alive, then dead, cursed, uncursed, cursed again, dead, alive, almost dead several times thereafter, and topped it all off with a brief sojourn to the end of the world.

But he's not dead, at the moment.

The moon is shining brightly on him, and there's skin over the bones. His face is set and grim as death itself, but the determination speaks of life. The sea is his, and, more importantly, the _Pearl_. He owns it, all he sees. He's stolen it again, and it's his.

Elizabeth stands watching him in the moonlight, in the dark, in the rising wind, and she holds on to her own hat so as not to lose it. She is the King, but she owns nothing but his tentative allegiance. She's on his ship, and by rights he owns her as well.

She watches his finger stroke along the weatherbeaten wood. It's not love, the way Jack strokes and talks to his ship. It's not pride, it's not triumph, it's not content. The only word she can put to it is _defiance_, for that seems the one emotion Barbossa is still truly capable of. He stands for himself and against everything else.

His head turns, giving her a profile as weatherbeaten as the ship itself, and she realizes he knows she's watching. He's known all along.

She slips back into the cabin, and locks the door behind her.

* * *

The third morning out, he comes upon her heaving over the side. Weak and wasted and pale, unwilling to meet his gaze. It's neither consternation nor concern that shows on his face, but rather a bit of bewilderment.

"Sea sick," she manages, between gasps.

"Ye've been away too long, _Captain_," says Barbossa. She ought to have known that he'd take the opportunity to jeer at her. It matters not, however; the ship slips sickeningly to one side and she darts forward again over the rail. For a moment she hovers between the deck and the water, needing only the slightest of pushes to be over the side and into the drink. Would she live? She remembers how to swim, and needing to, vividly. But would her limbs move, heavy as they were? And would he not just leave her behind?

He's caught her by the elbow. He's holding her down. Solid ground, or at least, as solid as the ground gets, far out to sea.

"Too long," says Barbossa again, and she hasn't the strength or the breath to disagree with him.

They sail through storms, into sun. They meet every wave like a battle on the front lines.

Elizabeth has missed this. It grabs at her heart, at her throat, to think how much she has missed this. And she can't name the emotion, as she stands at the rail and watches the surging seas.

She won't name it. Because it's the same, it's what she's seen on the Captain's face, in his manners and bearing. So she leaves it nameless, in self defense.

She's a pirate, after all.

They make landfall in a matter of weeks, not the months she's been secretly hoping for. She doesn't like the new crew, and doesn't like the old captain, but the ship and the sea she loves. She's reluctant to let them go, though she knows she has a duty ahead of her that cannot be disregarded.

Barbossa takes her over in the dinghy. Not rowing himself, mind, but standing majestically in the brow, his traditional sneer in place, catching the wind and the salt spray in his eyes, the lines in his face, his cracked hands. He is the figurehead, eyes blind as wood; he sees only what he wants to see.

It's at times like this that she remembers most vividly being afraid of him.

Then they're on land. When she alights from the dinghy he unexpectedly puts a hand out for her, should she need it. He does it without looking at her, with nothing past the usual contempt. She understands then that he sees her as a constant liability and a possible burden--- should she fall, what is he to do with a broken-legged Pirate King? She makes sure not to stumble, and does not take his hand.

It's hardly inviting, anyhow, what with those clawlike yellowed fingernails.

Jack is being held in a house just outside the village, which astounds her with its inefficiency. "No secret islands?" she challenges Barbossa. "No uncharted backwaters? No marooning him on a rum-runner's stopgap?"

The sneer is more prevalent than ever.

"We've tried all those," he says. "If ye want to keep Jack Sparrow imprisoned, it's simple. Don't give him a reason to leave."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snaps. "I know Jack, and if there's one thing I know better than all else, it's that he'll do anything to be free. Come hell or high water."

"More likely hell," says Barbossa, and opens the door.

It is, for lack of a better turn of phrase, a one-man saloon. Casks of rum line the walls, biliously-painted ladies lounge here and there, and there's a half-finished plate of mutton on a sideboard. Seated at the table with his back to her is the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow--- dodger of bullets, leader of men, victim of mutiny, occasionally cursed, dead more than once, and now---

He whips around, bottle in his hand, and his eyes light up at the sight of her. Instantly he's up and out of his chair, striding forward to meet her. "Lizzie, darling! I wondered when you'd show up! Can't leave well enough alone, can you?"

She has taken a step back but he's on her anyway, hands clasping hers, the still-held bottle of rum clanking against her wedding ring, and he's leaning forward to press a whiskery kiss to her cheek. He leans back again and beams at her. "Long trip, was it? My dear, you look younger every day."

"As do you." She's scrutinizing his face, cataloguing the changes. Fewer lines around his mouth, around his eyes. There's almost a waifishness to him; his collarbones are beginning to protrude. He looks much the same, much the old familiar Jack she knew so well--- or, perhaps, didn't really know at all--- but what Barbossa says is true. He's changed. He's changing.

"The Fountain of Youth," she says.

He drops his eyes. "_Agua da Vida_," he says. "The accurate translation can be debated all day, if you like that sort of thing. Water of Life, Fountain of Youth, Nectar of Innocence, Curtains of Idiocy, whatever you want to call it. Let's not talk about me, let's talk about _you_. You look---" He waves a hand in front of his face, stops and takes her in. She can feel him adjusting, making room for all her newnesses. His eyes are starting to glint, a sardonic smile appears to be making its way onto his face. He glances ostentatiously between her and Barbossa. "How long a trip did you say it was?"

It is evident that Barbossa has not noticed anything amiss with Elizabeth's figure up until now. He looks from Jack to Elizabeth, to Elizabeth's waist, and the look of disgust and outrage as he connects the implications is so obvious that Elizabeth starts to laugh.

She controls herself quickly, and Jack flips an airy hand at Barbossa in dismissal. Oddly enough, the old pirate takes it as such, turning away with a familiar curl of his lip. As Jack lets her hands go he leaves the bottle clasped in her fingers. "Keep it," he says grandiosely, "I've got a million of 'em." He slings an arm around her shoulders in a continuation of his motion, and meanders her away towards the center of the room. "Let's you and me have a little chat. Just you and old Jack, shall we, Lizzie? Just like old times." What he means by this is unclear until he sits her down beside him at the table and retrieves yet another bottle of rum from beneath it. He lifts it to her in respect, uncorks it, takes a swig, and grins impartially at the bottle and her. "How long's it been?"

"Since you stole my ship?" she counters. Jack thinks about this.

"Oh, right," he says, and stoppers the bottle, thumping it down on the table. "Desperate times call for desperate measures, Captain Swann."

"Turner."

"Turner. Right. I knew that." The bottle does him no good stopped up; he uncorks it again, takes another swig, and lets it down to rest gently between his twitching hands. "The question is, Lizzie, would I have had need to commandeer your ship without the fact that my own ship had been most deviously kidnapped--- I beg y'r pardon, _ship_napped--- by the most devious musty mutinous ratbag what ever walked a gangplank? I speak here of Barbossa, ye ken." He points a finger at her, leans forward. "Is he listening?" he whispers.

Elizabeth catches a sidelong glance from Barbossa, who stands at the door with his arms akimbo, hands resting on his broad belt, eyes narrowed.

"He's hearing every word," she says.

"Mutinous musty ratbag," says Jack again, louder this time. "A pox on his moldy old soul. If he 'as one, which is doubtful. He deprives the world of cheer and disappoints small children."

"Tell me," says Elizabeth, reaching out. She takes his hand, his twitching unsteady hand, and looks into his eyes. The knowing glint is lessening, turning into something else. He'll be truthful with her; he owes her that, at least, and he knows it. "Tell me what it was like."

"The Fountain," says Jack.

"The Fountain," says Elizabeth. He turns his hand over and she slides her fingers against his rough and dirty palm. Jack looks away from her, looks down at their hands. Connected, joined. Together.

"It was very wet," he says, quietly.

She gets the story from him. But it takes a while.

* * *

In the mind of the Pirate King, there is a very strong image.

A little boy, laughing. He plays in the water as it spills over him, a rain of finery like nothing else. The water is vividly colored, each drop luminescent and changing as it runs into others, limning the boy's body with light. He wears ragged clothes, drenched and soaking, and in the water beside him floats a small tricornered hat.

Outside the Fountain, Jack is standing, watching. Waiting.

He makes his decision, and steps into the water.

Closes his eyes. Drinks deep.

* * *

"Ten years," says Jack.

Elizabeth says nothing, doesn't even nod. She doesn't need to. He knows the legend as well as she does; better, most likely. He's considered it in terms of himself, as a matter of fact.

He lounges back in his chair, one booted foot up against the wall. The bottles are empty, and his belly is full, and he can afford to smile at the world. "And you're alright with this, Eliz'beth?"

She's staring at the table. "What choice have I got?"

Jack tilts his head to one side, acknowledging this. "Well, after all," he says, with deceptive gentleness, "you're not getting any younger."

Her head snaps up, and she glares at him. "You'll watch your tone, Jack Sparrow. I'll wait for him. And I won't even mind."

He waves his hands in the air, almost apologetically. "Never said you would. Well. Never di_rec_tly said you would. Ye need to stop reading between the lines, Lizzie."

"I won't be alone. That's important."

"No," he says, softly, and straightens up. "You won't. The sure-to-be-infamous offspring of the King of the Brethren Court and the Captain of the Flying Dutchman. What'll ye call the little chap, when he arrives?"

"I was thinking of naming him after my father." She smoothes a hand over her belly, carefully. She can feel nothing, but she believes the life within is growing, quickening, with her touch.

Jack snorts. "Weatherby Turner? Now, that's an awful thing to do to an innocent child."

"No one asked you, Jack."

"They should! I'm _great_ at naming things! It's me speciality, I get called in to royal courts fer occasions just such as these!" He throws his hands around, grinning at her. Impossible as it seems, he's grown even more frivolous and unpredictable as time goes by. He doesn't seem to appreciate the seriousness of his situation: imprisoned, completely at her mercy, and with the water of the Fountain of Youth working on him a bit more every day. Who could say where the end might be? The idea of Jack as a child, as a babe in arms, is not appealing. The idea of Jack as an ungovernable scoundrel in his early teens is even worse.

She leans forward. "Don't you worry about this, Jack?"

"About this?" He sweeps a hand up and down to indicate his form, discerning at once what she's referring to. Grins at her charmingly, disarmingly, and she notes again that the lines in his so-familiar face are disappearing, smoothing back into his roughened skin. "Naught to worry a_bout_, Lizzie. I drank from the Fountain of Youth, and it works exactly as one might expect. Fer once, there's no surprises." His smile fades a little. "And here I thought it would be _boring_, if there weren't any surprises."

Elizabeth stands up, a hand moving automatically to her waist. She stretches, feeling the ache of sitting still for so long after the movement of the ship. She's had very little rum, wary of sickening, and she can no longer feel the warmth of it. There's only the warmth of Jack, still seated, eyes half closed as he looks up at her, and a small, lazy smile that drifts across his face.

"Ten years, eh?" he says.

"I'll come back when I've decided whether or not to kill you," Elizabeth says back, and moves from the room, out the front door.

Barbossa waits for her just outside, looking impossibly real in the sun, the mundane setting of a village afternoon. He squints at her, and waits for her to speak.

"He's perfectly content here," she says.

"I told ye," says Barbossa, folding his arms.

"Well, we can't have that," Elizabeth tells him, and begins to walk. He paces along beside her, directing her without ever seeming to lead her. They make for the dinghy, for which she is grateful. She's had enough of dry land for the time being.

"Have ye decided what his punishment is to be?"

"I can't sentence him to death," she says, simply, before she was even aware of it herself. She shakes her head. "You knew it, too, didn't you? No matter what he's done, no matter what he's stolen. Lives and hearts and ships and treasure charts. I can't do it."

"I know it," Barbossa allows, with a swift jerk of his chin. "Which is why I would rather make the decision meself."

She doesn't think he could, either, after all that's happened. But this, perhaps, is just her own wishful thinking. She believes in friendships, in loves, in loyalties. After all that's happened, after being a pirate herself, she ought to know better now.

She doesn't, though. In some ways, then, she's still Elizabeth Swann, Governor's daughter.

She has to hide it, though, that small secret part of her. She can't tell Barbossa any of this. He doesn't need any more reasons to laugh at her. And he's certainly tried hard enough to kill Jack in the past; realistically, she knows, there's no reason he shouldn't now.

So she says, "It's my decision. And I say he lives."

Barbossa rolls his eyes at her, and stumps past her towards the dinghy. She follows, fighting the urge to reach out and catch at his sleeve, to make him turn and look at her. Really look at her, admit who and what she was. Show the respect she deserves--- or did deserve, once. As a Pirate King with neither ship nor crew, she's no longer sure of what she's entitled to.

She calls, "That doesn't mean he won't be punished."

Barbossa has reached the dinghy a step ahead of her; he stops and turns around, face to face with her, looking down. "Aye? And what be the punishment, to equal the crime? Ye know too well there's nothing short of death that will matter to him at all. He cares for naught but his skin, now, and he's nothing else to have taken away. What are ye going to do with Sparrow, to make him regret the things he's done?"

Elizabeth stands still, and swallows.

"Put him in irons," she says, "and bring him aboard. He's to go home with me."

Barbossa looks her up and down, the slow and burning glance of a sneering pirate. "And haven't ye enough to worry about, Captain? With ye in such a condition. What would Mr. Turner think?"

"Put him in irons," says Elizabeth again, "and bring him aboard. Jack Sparrow is no longer your concern, Captain Barbossa."

Barbossa gives an exaggerated bow to direct her to the dinghy. "As the King commands," he says, and again she gets the sense of something dangerous, bubbling, just beneath the craggy surface. She gets into the dinghy and waits for him, nonetheless.

She is no longer looking forward to being back on the _Pearl_, sea or no sea to comfort her.

* * *

Comes a day when she goes to see Jack in the brig, and finds him asleep.

There's a sweetness to him unconscious that he lacks when awake. He's curled up on the bench, face hidden from her, and one leg has slipped downwards to rest his foot on the floor. His trousers have ridden up from his ankles, and her breath unexpectedly catches. He looks so young, it breaks her heart.

It's an illusion, though, and it's gone when he awakes, rouses, turns on for her that devious grin. Advances on the bars, remarks how it's just like old times, and then reaches for her hand.

* * *

He doesn't like walking on land. It makes him, he says, look silly.

Elizabeth retorts that he can hardly blame the land for _that_. Not _just_ the land, anyhow.

He tells her to shush, and be nice, and wave at Barbossa.

He has stolen Barbossa's hat.

* * *

They arrive and start lying immediately, without preamble, bluffing various things for the benefit of the servants. He's a guard, hired to protect her, and will sleep in the cellar. How he's meant to protect her when he's chained to the wall at night is goes unexplained. None of the maids are to enter his room without knocking, after one unfortunate incident with poor Mabel. In fact, none of the maids are to enter his room at all.

He takes tea with Elizabeth, and smiles at her most charmingly.

He takes supper with Elizabeth, and complains only a little about the lack of rum.

She sets some ground rules, for the benefit of both of them. During the day he is free to move about the house as he likes, assured that someone is constantly keeping an eye on him. At night he retires to his room and patiently suffers himself to be locked up again. When Elizabeth leaves the house, he is welcome to accompany her if he wishes.

"And I'd think you might show some gratitude," she tells him. "You may not like this, but if I'd left you in Barbossa's hands---"

"I'd have a lot more to drink," says Jack. Then he smiles, and continues, "I know, Lizzie. He'd figure out a way to kill me, one way or another. He's a sneaky devil, that Barbossa."

She expects it will last perhaps a week, and indeed, one morning upon entering his room to free him from his chains for the day, she finds it empty. She stands in the middle of the room, hands at her sides, empty. She's not sure what to do.

It's a very quiet day.

But he's back in time for supper, and he's brought her a present.

"World looks better through the bottom of a glass," he says into her ear as she sits at the dinner table, and plonks the bottle down in front of her. "Welcome home, Elizabeth Swann."

"Turner," she says, faintly.

"Turner," he agrees, but neither of them really mean it.

* * *

Two months go by with the two of them in her father's house, with no chains and no awkward silences. Jack takes over, the way he tends to take over, and spins the household into a tumult. He's not meant for solid foundations and unrockable houses, but he's adapting. Every day younger, she can see him changing, and still, though he must chafe at the lack of seawater, he stays.

Every week there's a new bottle of rum at dinner. He pours and she drinks, she pours and he drinks, they abandon the pouring and take turns and both drink from the bottle. The wide lip of the bottle is cheap glass, a little grainy, slick from the rum pouring liberally from it into his mouth, then her's.

It's after supper and the servants have gone to bed, and he's making a show of helping her to the stairs. One arm around her shoulders, his hair heavy against her neck, and the steady thump of his heartbeat somewhere not too far away. Not nearly as far away as it should be.

They stumble together into the banister and she says, "Forgetting how to walk already, Jack?"

"Forgetting lots of things," he mumbles, and they make it up three steps before his weight begins to drag her down. He stops walking, stops moving, tucks his arm instead around her waist and laces the fingers of his other hand in hers and sets her to a slow spin that will surely, surely, lead her to face him.

She can't guess at his age, now. It's impossible to tell. His eyes look the same.

He tugs her forward and says, "I knew I should have bought a second bottle."

"I think we've both had quite enough, actually, Jack." She puts a hand on his head, affectionately, though it slips off cockeyed as he moves his head and she curls a finger instead around his ear.

"We shouldn't've been sharing," says Jack, swaying forward, blinking slowly.

His lips are very close.

"Why not?" asks Elizabeth.

"Because," whispers the pirate, "I wanted me own. But that's not it, Lizzie. That's, that's not it." He waves a hand at all the things that it is not, and sets her gently back against the wall. Plants a hand on one side of her head and tries to see straight. "I've got something for you, Elizabeth. Swann."

"Don't want it." She turns her head away from him and he kisses her neck, just lightly, just barely, then draws away from her and stands up as straight as he can manage, in his condition.

"Just look," he says, and there's another bottle in his hand. It's tiny, a fraction of the size of the bottle of rum, and she can't imagine what good so small an amount of liquor would do him. But the color is different, pale, as though the liquid inside was made of light. He holds it up to her.

"I brought some with me," he says.

Elizabeth doesn't understand. "What--- Jack---"

"The Fountain of Youth." He grins, but softly. "I brought some back. For you. If you want it."

She can't move, can't breathe, can't answer him a yes or a no, and he nods as though he knows. As though he's ancient and terrible and there is nothing that he does not know. He picks up her hand an folds her fingers around the delicate glass.

"You think about it, Lizzie," he says, and for a moment he draws back to look at her seriously. She's done him in in more ways than one, countless times. She's holding him captive with more than bars and chains and rules. She's killed him and brought him back and operates on whim, like the wind in the sails. They both of them are pirates.

He says nothing further, but leans forward again. She flinches, just slightly, but he's only moving on up the stairs. He sleeps in the bedroom next to hers, that night, and all the nights after.

* * *

A week later, she awakes in the dead of the night with a furious pain. The child in her belly is a beast, and is tearing her up to get out. The bed is awash in blood, and Elizabeth is once again lost on the seas.

Jack's at her side as soon as she cries out, and in the flicker of candlelight his eyes are wide and panicked. He knows nothing of what to do.

There's a hustle, a raising of the alarm, and distant cries. Cold hands below, and Jack's hand on hers. She holds onto him so tightly she feels something crack, but he does not complain.

She cries for hours, till she's empty; and though again she's lost something she loved dearly, this time it's not a dream.

* * *

When she has recovered (days later), when she can walk again (weeks), when she no longer wants to cradle her empty belly as though she's falling apart, as though she's been cut in twain(even longer), she goes to Jack and hands him the delicate glass bottle.

"I can't," she says simply.

He holds it in one rough palm, weighs it, looks up at her again.

"Why not, Lizzie?"

"Because I want to die," she tells him, and means it with all her heart. "Not now, Jack--- don't look like that--- but when I must. I don't know what's coming, and it worries me. But it's better than seeing the days of your life stretch endlessly into the distance, and know that they're all the same."

"When you're better, Elizabeth," he says, carefully, as though he hasn't been paying attention to this explanation at all, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll find a ship. We'll buy one, if we have to. We'll get ourselves a ship, and we'll find ourselves a crew, and we'll go out again. You've still got nine years left. You can't waste them."

"No," agrees Elizabeth, curling her fingers together, closed, over her empty hand. "No, I can't waste them."

* * *

The sea is cleansing, healing. But the sun and the wind are aging her, she can feel them, prickling away at her. At the once-beautiful girl who was Elizabeth Swann, the daughter, the theoretical lady, the child.

Coming down the stairs to see her childhood friend waiting, looking up at her, every glance of deep brown eyes reminding her that once she had promised to take care of him. And now, dead, out to sea and dead, and every day brought him one step closer.

She makes herself stop dreaming.

And then she has to take up sewing, because Jack has undergrown all his clothes.

* * *

For a few months, as far as she can tell, they're the same age.

"How is it that twenty six looks so much better on you than it does on me?" Elizabeth asks, pouting a little. It's a rhetorical question, but she knows better than to expect Jack not to answer it.

Which he does, with a grin that no longer grants his face laugh lines.

"It's not so much the material, darling," he says. "It's how you _wear_ it."

* * *

At fifteen--- or thereabouts--- Jack is abominably curious. He finds the chest where she has hidden it beneath her bed, crawls out backwards, and thrusts it at her.

"Can I see it?"

She tries to pry his hands from the carved wood. "No! Put that down."

"Can't I? Why not?" He holds it up to his ear, frowns lightly. "Can't hear anything."

"Trust me, it's beating." She slaps at one of his hands. "Let go. Give it to me. It's beating."

"Oh yes?" That sly glance, so exactly what she had grown so familiar with in the adult Jack, his chin dipped down, his eyes mischievous. "And you're sure about that?"

"Very sure. Give it to me, Jack."

He relents, and lets it go. He's surprisingly slight, and his youthful face, finally having regressed beyond the call of mustaches and beard, is sweet and delicate. Which makes it all the more surprising when he misbehaves; perhaps, though, she hasn't the right to expect anything else. After all, it _is_ Jack. He's just a bit shorter than he used to be.

"He's going to be waiting for you," he says. "He'll be happy, won't he."

Elizabeth sinks onto her bed, holding the chest in her lap. No, she can't hear it, but she can feel the steady thump-thump-thump, reverberating through the wood. "I hope so," she says. "I hope he's happy, waiting for me."

"And you're going to have a _wonderful_ time explaining who I am," says Jack, deadpan, folding his arms.

"Indeed," says Elizabeth through her teeth. "Indeed, we are."

* * *

Ten years, she waits, and she is not alone.

She knows that Will will find her no matter where she is, but at the last she turns the ship--- hands steady on the wheel, familiar, her fingers callused from long, hard use--- in the direction of the island where she saw him last, where she said goodbye, where he gave her his heart. It's there that they spend the last day, there that they eat supper in the declining light. She opens the door for Jack, and together they walk into the sunset.

He glances at her swiftly, nudges at the corner of his tricorn, and runs ahead. She can hear him singing.

He pauses at land's end, and waits for her. For ten years, he's all she's known, and likewise for him. She reaches down to grasp his hand, and they turn to the sunset. Watch for that green spark, shooting up like a herald. Waiting to see it again.

Ship's sails, on the horizon.

In her hand, Elizabeth fingers the delicate glass bottle, which shines with a curious light. In the other, Jack's childish fingers curl, holding on for all he's worth.

Ten years is a long time to wait, for one day.

She hopes she's worth it.


End file.
